research-article

Optimal workflow-aware authorizations

Authors:

Samuel J. Burri,

Günter KarjothAuthors Info & Claims

SACMAT '12: Proceedings of the 17th ACM symposium on Access Control Models and Technologies

Pages 93 - 102

https://doi.org/10.1145/2295136.2295154

Published: 20 June 2012 Publication History

Abstract

Balancing protection and empowerment is a central problem when specifying authorizations. The principle of least privilege, the classical approach to balancing these two conflicting objectives, says that users shall only be authorized to execute the tasks necessary to complete their job. However, when there are multiple authorization policies satisfying least privilege, which one should be chosen?

In this paper, we model the tasks that users must execute as workflows, and the risk and cost associated with authorization policies and their administration. We then formulate the balancing of empowerment and protection as an optimization problem: finding a cost-minimizing authorization policy that allows a successful workflow execution. We show that finding an optimal solution for a role-based cost function is NP-complete. We support our results with a series of examples, which we also use to measure the performance of our prototype implementation.

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Cited By

Crampton JEiben EGutin GKarapetyan DMajumdar D(2022)Valued Authorization Policy Existence Problem: Theory and ExperimentsACM Transactions on Privacy and Security10.1145/352810125:4(1-32)Online publication date: 9-Jul-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3528101
Boughrous MEl Bakkali H(2021)A Workflow Criticality-Based Approach to Bypass the Workflow Satisfiability ProblemSecurity and Communication Networks10.1155/2021/33309232021Online publication date: 1-Jan-2021
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1155/2021/3330923
Roy ASural SMajumdar AVaidya JAtluri V(2021)Enabling Workforce Optimization in Constrained Attribute-Based Access Control SystemsIEEE Transactions on Emerging Topics in Computing10.1109/TETC.2019.29447879:4(1901-1913)Online publication date: 1-Oct-2021
https://doi.org/10.1109/TETC.2019.2944787
Show More Cited By

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Published In

cover image ACM Conferences

SACMAT '12: Proceedings of the 17th ACM symposium on Access Control Models and Technologies

June 2012

242 pages

ISBN:9781450312950

DOI:10.1145/2295136

General Chairs:
Vijay Atluri
Rutgers University, USA
,
Jaideep Vaidya
Rutgers University, USA
,
Program Chairs:
Axel Kern
Beta Systems Software AG, Germany
,
Murat Kantarcioglu
University of Texas at Dallas, USA

Copyright © 2012 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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SIGSAC: ACM Special Interest Group on Security, Audit, and Control

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 20 June 2012

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SACMAT '12

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SIGSAC

SACMAT '12: 17th ACM Symposium on Access Control Models and Technologies

June 20 - 22, 2012

New Jersey, Newark, USA

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SACMAT '12 Paper Acceptance Rate 19 of 73 submissions, 26%;

Overall Acceptance Rate 177 of 597 submissions, 30%

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Cited By

Crampton JEiben EGutin GKarapetyan DMajumdar D(2022)Valued Authorization Policy Existence Problem: Theory and ExperimentsACM Transactions on Privacy and Security10.1145/352810125:4(1-32)Online publication date: 9-Jul-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3528101
Boughrous MEl Bakkali H(2021)A Workflow Criticality-Based Approach to Bypass the Workflow Satisfiability ProblemSecurity and Communication Networks10.1155/2021/33309232021Online publication date: 1-Jan-2021
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1155/2021/3330923
Roy ASural SMajumdar AVaidya JAtluri V(2021)Enabling Workforce Optimization in Constrained Attribute-Based Access Control SystemsIEEE Transactions on Emerging Topics in Computing10.1109/TETC.2019.29447879:4(1901-1913)Online publication date: 1-Oct-2021
https://doi.org/10.1109/TETC.2019.2944787
Lu HChen XLiu QSamorani MSong GYang Y(2020)Stochastic Workflow Authorizations with Queueing ConstraintsIEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing10.1109/TDSC.2020.3026296(1-1)Online publication date: 2020
https://doi.org/10.1109/TDSC.2020.3026296
Kasse JXu Lde Vrieze PBai Y(2019)Verifying for Compliance to Data Constraints in Collaborative Business ProcessesCollaborative Networks and Digital Transformation10.1007/978-3-030-28464-0_23(259-270)Online publication date: 15-Aug-2019
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-28464-0_23
Kasinathan PCuellar J(2019)Securing Emergent IoT ApplicationsChallenging the Borders of Justice in the Age of Migrations10.1007/978-3-030-17601-3_3(99-147)Online publication date: 14-Apr-2019
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-17601-3_3
Bertolissi Cdos Santos DRanise SBertino ELin DLobo J(2018)Solving Multi-Objective Workflow Satisfiability Problems with Optimization Modulo Theories TechniquesProceedings of the 23nd ACM on Symposium on Access Control Models and Technologies10.1145/3205977.3205982(117-128)Online publication date: 7-Jun-2018
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3205977.3205982
Kasinathan PCuellar J(2018)Workflow-Aware Security of Integrated Mobility ServicesComputer Security10.1007/978-3-319-98989-1_1(3-19)Online publication date: 7-Aug-2018
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98989-1_1
dos Santos DRanise SCompagna LPonta S(2017)Automatically finding execution scenarios to deploy security-sensitive workflowsJournal of Computer Security10.3233/JCS-1689425:3(255-282)Online publication date: 29-May-2017
https://doi.org/10.3233/JCS-16894
Crampton JGutin GKarapetyan DWatrigant R(2017)The bi-objective workflow satisfiability problem and workflow resiliency1Journal of Computer Security10.3233/JCS-1684925:1(83-115)Online publication date: 16-Mar-2017
https://doi.org/10.3233/JCS-16849
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